


playing from the heart

by marginaliana



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Board Games, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-02
Updated: 2017-01-02
Packaged: 2018-09-14 06:38:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9166528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginaliana/pseuds/marginaliana
Summary: There are times, in the darkness of space between Eadu and Jedha, when Bodhi wonders if it had all been for this. It does not matter, in the end. Still, he goes.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to vacillating and ShhNoOneKnows for beta reading.

There are times, in the darkness of space between Eadu and Jedha, when Bodhi wonders if it had all been for this. Not just the years of Galen's life – that _had_ been for this – but their friendship, slow-cultivated, months of words passing half-guarded between them, the ways that Galen had made him understand he wasn't alone.

The one night of something more than friendship.

He will probably never know. And yet it does not matter, in the end. Still, he goes.

\-----

He'd known Erso only to speak to for the first few years at least. Bodhi's assigned route had taken him to Eadu often, so he became familiar with the best routes in and out, the craggy landscape and the flat landing platform. Erso supervised the kyber crystal deliveries personally at times, always with a word of thanks to the pilots and the loading crew. He was well-liked enough among them as far as Bodhi knew. Rumors occasionally circulated that his family had been killed by the rebellion, but he was neither so fanatical nor so violent as to draw any real attention. For himself, Bodhi only noticed that Erso smiled rarely, never in a way that showed his teeth. But so many of them were like that.

Their friendship began with a chance encounter in the canteen. Bodhi was on mandatory rest break between flights, looking for something to keep him occupied. The dejarik board was always in use and he had no real love of the game, but in a further corner of the room was a novacrown board, well-made, not unlike the one on which his grandmother had taught him to play. Erso was seated beside it, eying the setup: touching his fingertip to one piece, picking it up, setting it down again. Bodhi drifted over, drawn by something he could not name.

"Do you play?" Erso said abruptly.

"A little," said Bodhi and then, with a mischievous impulse, "We could bet on a game, if you like."

Erso stared at him, then threw his head back and laughed, the sound coming from deep within his chest. Bodhi caught himself following the long line of Erso's neck with his gaze, had to force himself to focus on the board instead. 

"Oh, no, you won't get me with that," Erso said. "But a friendly game, perhaps?"

Bodhi slid into the seat opposite him. "Of course," he said, and then, belatedly, "Sir."

Erso just rolled his eyes at that. "Galen," he said. "Call me Galen."

\-----

He goes mad, of course, in the prison of the bor gullet's writhing tentacles. Memories come and go, sometimes in sequence and sometimes in waves that he cannot not grasp. 

His first job, back on Jedha, running packages for his grandmother and her trading partners, across the market on foot, dodging bodies that buzz or chitter or curse at him in a hundred different languages. The smell of cooking meat, of spice, the brush of robes or tent fabric against his bare arms. 

Then out into the desert on a cheap hover, ferrying document scrolls and priests and scholars from temple to temple over the sands. Mostly the scholars gasp and cling to him, whereas the priests laugh. He likes the way they laugh, the way it feels okay for him to laugh, too. 

After that he moves up to local government shipping, a good step up, transporting food and medical supplies from nearby planets along with pilgrims and tourists. Enough pay to leave some for his parents. 

Then another step up, an imperial job out-system, long haul cargo that was boxed and sealed, heavy weight, and so much of his work is just lifting and carrying. Lonely, perhaps, this last, but he plays music from the ship's speakers, the old recordings that his mother collects and copies up for him when he's able to visit. Ululations of two voices and three and four and more, joining up one by one until they make his ship quiver with the resonance. 

And there is down time between trips, learning dice games and dejarik and cu'bikad from the other pilots, watching old adventure holos and histories. Being assigned to the Jedha-Eadu run permanently, which is an easy one despite a couple of close calls with the rebellion. When he can spare the time to visit the temple he hears murmurs about the stepped-up pace of the kyber mining, pointed readings during the service that make him squirm a little. But he does no mining himself, just cargo hauling, and it's a good job, he tells himself, a solid job, a job that keeps him fed. It's enough – to buy small luxuries, to keep his parents well-settled though his grandmother is dead now and his father is getting sand-sickness. It's a good job. It's enough. He keeps telling himself. 

Months of that, years, most of his life – then skipping ahead to Galen's hands, his mouth and the roughness of his beard, the desperate press of body against body. There is little enough of this and the bor gullet's tendrils move on quickly to other memories. Bodhi tries not to wish he could dwell in that moment forever, even in madness. 

Circling back again, things Galen says about the project when he talks about it at all. Careful equivocations. People he used to know, places – although Bodhi can tell these are not their real names. Jedha, which Galen calls Jeru, obvious from the descriptions of its temples and markets, from the allusions to places that Bodhi knows. Saw Gerrera, who he calls Knife-Tooth. Never what he says but what he doesn't say.

And his hands, again and again and always. The bor gullet must like them as much as Bodhi likes them, worn rough from working, from twisting and turning around each other, quivering a little and then, when observed, carefully controlled into stillness. The moment when he presses the holo chip into Bodhi's palm. The look in his eye then.

The moment when he presses the holo chip into Bodhi's palm. 

The moment when he presses the holo chip into Bodhi's palm. 

The moment when he presses the holo chip into Bodhi's palm. 

Little wonder that Bodhi goes mad.

\----

They became friends across the board, learning each other. They talked about engines, taking them apart and putting them together again. Bodhi's interest had always been more functional than abstract, just as much as he needed to know if he broke down, but Galen's enthusiasm for machine design began to be infectious after a while and Bodhi spent some time during his next flight reading through old paper manuals. In turn he brought back food from Jedha, spiced nuts and barabel fruit pastries. His mother worked out that he'd met someone and she made jars of pickled lemon, her gnarled hands swift and sure as she twisted the lids shut and packed them neatly in his carryall bag. When Galen ate them his eyes closed in pleasure, softening the harsh lines of his face.

Galen played novacrown cautiously, caressing the pieces with his hands and his eyes, searching for the best path ahead. He seemed to calculate moves in his head, projecting likely scenarios many rounds further and then winding them back until he was satisfied that he had found the way forward. Often they went many minutes without speaking. It reminded Bodhi of the temple in the hush before the service, of his grandmother and the way she used silence as a tool, let it carry the weight of her approval or disapproval in a negotiation. He himself played more instinctively, choosing his move by the overall shape of the board, patterns that he sensed more than understood. And yet they were well-matched in skill, neither dominating the other in wins.

"It is not easy," Galen said once. It was abrupt – he was often abrupt, as if he were continuing a conversation that only he had heard. "To make the right choices. You play from the heart, though. That is your strength." And oh, if Bodhi hadn't loved him already it would have happened then, with those beautiful terrible words on his lips.

\-----

When he comes back to himself he is in a cell. There is a man pressed up against the bars. "Hey. Hey! Are you the pilot?" he asks.

Bodhi has to think about it for a long moment. "I brought the message," he says. "I'm the pilot." It brings a smile to his face.

Later, when they open the doors of the cells, they tell him to go and he goes. 

\----

It became impossible not to know what they were building, what the crystals were for. There was no one moment of realization, only the slow-dawning knowledge of his knowledge. Planet-killer, they called it, the Death Star. The name was on the lips of every Stormtrooper now, passing from person to person like wind rushing in to fill places that were empty. 

Perhaps if it had been called something else Bodhi could have set his concerns aside. Was it cowardly to wish that true and not this? 

Galen had always been grieving but it was worse now – grieving not just for whatever family he may have had but for something more fundamental. Grieving for himself, perhaps. For all of them. Bodhi could see it in his own face, too, in the reflection on the windscreen of his ship, superimposed over the craggy pillars of Eadu or the black circle that blotted the skies of Jedha.

\----

"You see Erso out there?"

They are on the ridge above Eadu base. Bodhi lifts the binoculars to his face and looks, lets himself look for precious seconds at the sharp planes of Galen's face, the wet strings of his hair dripping rain down onto his neck. 

"That's him," he says. "That's him, Galen, in the dark suit."

Cassian takes the binoculars from him and looks. "Get back down there," he says, "and find us a ride out of here."

Bodhi blinks. "What are you doing?"

"You heard me."

"You said we came up here just to have a look!"

"I'm here, I'm looking," Cassian says. He waves the binoculars, but his gun is in the sniper configuration. " _Go_ ," he says, and Bodhi knows what will happen now.

He knows. And still he goes.

\----

The Death Star was almost ready, awaiting only the last checks and tests – the word had come down from Commander Krennic's men and they'd ordered a base-wide celebration, a reward for all their hard work. There was Zabrak ferment flowing freely in the canteen, a holo-screen showing one of the more popular imperial adventure stories, though it was difficult to hear it over the cheering and the babble of congratulations. Bodhi thought that for at least some of them the celebration was strained, pitched too loud and enthusiastic to be completely sincere. But he did not dare to be sincere himself, either. They had all condemned themselves.

He caught sight of Galen at the back of the room, in the corner by the novacrown board; he was staring at nothing and his face was paler than usual, his attempt at a smile no more than a grimace. Bodhi abandoned his full glass of ferment on a table and made his way there, clapping others on the shoulder as he went, giving as much of an appearance of happiness as he could manage. When he reached Galen's side he let his own smile fall from his face. It was a terrible relief.

"Galen," he said, and then nothing, because what was there to say? Galen's eyes were still locked on something neither of them could see – or both of them could, the star that was not a star. Bodhi touched his elbow, lightly at first and then harder, as if he could hold him to Eadu by sheer force of will. " _Galen_."

Galen blinked and his eyes came into focus. "Ah," he said, and "Bodhi, Bodhi," helpless with despair, and then he cupped Bodhi's face in his hands and leaned in to crush their mouths together.

When they slipped from the room, no one noticed.

\-----

Galen is dead and his daughter is trying not to weep. Bodhi wonders if maybe it's better this way – they have so far to go yet, they can still fail, they will probably fail. At least now Galen will be spared the pain of knowing it.

He hates himself for thinking it, but he cannot stop.

\-----

After, when Galen's head was pillowed on his naked thigh, Bodhi stroked shaking fingers through his sweat-soaked hair and said, low, "How can you bear it?" It was not safe to say more, not even here, not even now.

Galen turned his face against skin, hiding his eyes, but he did not pretend to misunderstand. "Because I must," he said. His voice did not break. "I must."

In the morning, as they were dressing, Galen pressed the holo chip into Bodhi's palm and said, "You are brave enough. If you play from the heart."

"I can be," Bodhi said, and then, tightening the straps of his jumpsuit, "Where shall I go?"

\-----

It ends like this; it was always going to end like this. He has done what he could – Jyn and Cassian and the rebel fleet must do the rest. He does not even know if they have gotten through. He will never know.

It was always going to end like this.

The grenade rolls up the loading ramp, comes to rest nearly at his feet. He sees it, as if in slow motion. The little light on it blinks furiously. "This is for you, Galen," Bodhi says, and his voice does not break, and then there is no more.


End file.
